childhood

• The tree is still up and will be until January 1st. Most likely, I will take it down on that day simply because I need to put it all away in the closet under the stairs. Currently, all the Christmas boxes are taking up residence in the office and I’m starting to sort through things there – getting rid of anything I don’t need. I need the space.

• I finished up in the bedroom yesterday – one more bag of books going to the library. That makes five.

• One of the little things in what Don calls my “stocking.”

A bumper sticker from our local used bookstore. Reminds me of when I had bangs.

• Do you remember me telling you that one of my presents from Don was going to be late? He ordered it stateside but it turns out it shipped from China. He showed me a picture of it on Christmas Day. It arrived yesterday.

It’s difficult to get a good photo of it, but here it is. He swears I mentioned ‘neon’ when we were discussing gifts and I have no recollection of that at all. None; which is slightly scary. Anyway, when he first showed it to me I was surprised, to say the least. But I actually really love it! It’s LED, by the way, not neon. Saint-German is the area of Paris we spent a lot of time in. It’s really lovely. We carried the sign around the house yesterday trying to determine where it would work the best, but we had always thought our office – which is full of memorabilia and whimsey – would be the best place for it, and it is. I like it here because I can see it clearly when I’m working on my projects.

I don’t think it would work anywhere else in the house (doesn’t fit with the rest of the decor) save the upstairs hallway, but we couldn’t find a good place for it there. This little area, tucked under the sloped ceiling, is perfect.

He’s such a sweetie! I’m a happy girl.

• The piano tuner messaged me this morning saying the piano was built in 1941. Mom would have been 14 then, which makes sense as I seem to remember her taking piano lessons when she was a teenager.

• I ordered a piece of sheet music yesterday on Amazon. Did you know that most sheet music today is only offered via a digital download? Ummm…no. I wanted the real deal, with a cover illustration and everything. So I found a used version that was in very good condition and I ordered that.

I remember growing up in an area where I could find sheet music at several local shops. My piano teacher ordered sheet music for us from Grinnell’s, a long ago store in downtown Detroit. Grinnell’s was a fantasy land for me. It had several floors filled with pianos; all sizes, all shapes, all prices. It had a great sheet music department. You could buy things like metronomes there. Once a year, we had a recital on one of the upper floors of Grinnell’s where we were judged by professional pianists. It was all very exciting and scary and wondrous.

There was also a shop in San Diego when I lived there – I don’t think it’s there any longer, but maybe it is – right by Balboa Park. It was a music store and when I could finally afford to have my piano shipped from Michigan to San Diego, I went there to buy all sorts of classical music. They had tons of sheet music. Does anyone know if it’s still there? I’d like to think it is.

Another thing from the past that I miss.

Our conversations here at the cottage have been full of this kind of thing lately. What have we lost to technology? Our list keeps getting longer.

Happy Saturday.

I grew up in a suburb near Detroit that sprang up after WW II. In my particular neighborhood, all of the houses were called bungalows. The tiny downstairs consisted of a living room, dining room, kitchen and 2 bedrooms. The upstairs was an unfinished attic room that every homeowner eventually made into an additional bedroom. The houses were made of brick and they were separated by the space of a driveway. We lived pretty close to each other. In the summertime, with the windows open, you could clearly hear conversations in neighboring houses.

It was a great place to grow up. There were lots of young families, many of the fathers were WWII vets, including my father, and there were lots of kids. There were often elaborate games of hide-and-seek in the early evening with kids from all over the neighborhood participating. We had to create our own adventures – no computer games or cell phones in those days. We rode our bikes (sans helmets – we would have laughed at the idea of a helmet) to get around. We played with our dolls, swam at the neighborhood pool, played baseball, made things, read books, played four-square in the street, walked up to the neighborhood drug store and ‘beer’ store for penny candy.

There was almost always someone around to play with. In my midwestern suburban neighborhood, we did something we called ‘calling out.’ For example, if I wanted to play with Patty Moore, who lived down the street, I would go to her house, station myself outside her front or side door – this could either be right outside the front door or further out from the house on the lawn or sidewalk – and yell, “Patty.” But this particular yell was not a crisp, short “Patty.” No, it was a sing-songy drawn out “Paa – aa – tee – ee” that changed pitch with each syllable. ‘Pa’ was the top note, ‘aa’ was a couple of notes down in pitch, ‘tee’ was back to the original note and ‘ee’ was back to the second note. It was definitely a minor, not a major, sound.

We all did it. If someone ‘called me out’ my mom, upon hearing the call, would tell me, “Claudia, so-and-so is calling you out.” And I would go to the door. Or, if I wasn’t available, my mom would go to the door and say “I’m sorry, so-and-so, Claudia isn’t home right now” or “Claudia is doing her homework and can’t come out.”

I suppose we knocked on a door now and then. But in my neighborhood the accepted thing to do was that wonderful, almost chant-like, ‘calling out.’

‘Calling out’ has a different meaning these days. It can mean calling someone’s name on the street to get their attention or challenging someone.

Now, here’s my question: Did you do something like this when you were a kid? Was this done in some version in every city and town? Or was it peculiar to my corner of Michigan?

Please share!

Potpourri on Saturday

Childhood Memories: ‘Calling Out’

Lambs Like to Party

A Note

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